Blogging in Venezuelan municipal schools

The Chacao project
Stages of the British Council-Chacao Municipality project
Results
Reference
Blog samples

Unidad Educativa Andrés Bello
(1 teacher/6th graders)
Unidad Educativa Juan de Dios Guanche
(1 teacher/7th graders)
Informatics coordinator from Escuelas de la Alcaldía de Chacao
ICT teacher trainer

Stage
Planning Workshop
Giving the workshop
Giving mini-class
Feed back / planning stage 2
What for? Activities Place 1 2
Giving support (F2F and online)
Designing WBL (F2F and online)
Supervising
Using WBL in the lab
Teacher trainer Teachers Unidad Educativa Andrés Bello y Juan de Dios Guanche Workshop British Coucil Application of learnt skills in schools

Wokshop Mini-class Feedback

ICT and CALL
ICT in the language classroom
Web-based lesson (demonstration)
Web-based lesson (teachers’)
Authoring software
Blogs and podcasts
Session 1 Session 2

Web-based lesson design
Pedagogical approach (Task-based approach)
Stages of task-based activities
Types of web-based lesson
A Web-based lesson is simply a lesson that includes online resources like blogs, wikis, webquests, podcasts, authoring tools, websites, etc. It is student centered and task-based.

Printed web-based lesson
Digital web-based lesson
Off-line web-based lesson
Blog web-based lesson

Lesson plan External material

Lesson plan (Word document) External material (Word document)

Six types of tasks (Willis, 1996) Take part in a dressing-up competition / Write a poem / Talk or write about past customs/ Produce a class magazine / Perform interactions Talk about things you own, past routines/ preferences and find people with similar ones / What generally makes you annoyed? Give advice in response to a letter from an advice column / Guess what’s in a picture / Social studies of young offenders Listen to descriptions of people & identify which person is / Compare ways of doing things in different countries/ Spot the differences Organize days of the week / Rank items in order of importance / Complete a chart / think of 5 ways to classify clothes you wear List things found in a particular place / everyday things / things you can do / qualities needed for a particular job Sample tasks Memory challenge games / ordering and sorting tasks Words / Things / Qualities / People / Places / Job-related skills Brainstorming, fact-finding Completed list or draft mind map Listing Students select the funniest experience, tell the class and give reasons for their choice Anecdotes / Personal reminiscence / Attitudes, opinions, preferences / Personal reactions Narrating, describing, exploring & explaining attitudes, opinions, reactions Social Sharing personal experiences Learners keep a diary describing their progress on a project Students do a comparing, present, justify & discuss solutions for the class to vote on the best one8s) Students design parallel tasks based on data Spot the missing item/ reach consensus from rankings/ justify decisions / Odd one out Follow up Small group activities / Creative writing / Social or historical research / Media projects / real life rehearsals Short puzzles, logic problems, real life problems / incomplete stories / Poems / Case studies Matching to identify someone or something / Compare to find similarities or differences Jumbles lists / Set of instructions / Sorting according to specific criteria / Half completed charts/ Lists of items Starting points Brainstorming, fact-finding, ordering & sorting, comparing, problem solving Analyzing real or hypothetical situations, reasoning and making decisions Matching, finding similarities / differences Sequencing, ranking, categorizing, classifying Processes Projects Solution(s) to problem Matching or assembling/ identifying similarities or differences Information or data ordered & sorted according to specified criteria Outcome Creative tasks Problem solving Comparing Ordering & sorting Task Aspects

Pre-task Warming up ; activating background knowledge Task Post-task (Follow-up) Students do something to express themselves in response to an activity. Further practice to make sure students reached lesson objective(s) Ask students to match pictures from a menu with a list of words Go to site  play a game (food groups)  correct suggestions about food groups  organize food using “a lot”, “some”, “little”  ask which food from the group classmate eats a lot, some or little  report Choose one food from the group in the game. Write about it. Send it to your teacher by e-mail. Stage Example Description

Identify topic from lesson or unit Find sites related to topic Plan/design pre-task, task and follow up activities Lesson plan & external material Web-based lesson design Scan the text Search skills needed Task-based approach Print or store on the computer Miguel Mendoza, 2006. British Council, Venezuela Apply, evaluate and edit (if need be)

The Maker

Printed/ Digital WBL Blog WBL Sheduling lab hours
On-line & F2f support (technical / class design)
Class observation
Lab support
Feedback

Problems (week 1) Teacher’s solution Results URL mistakes (Mispellings) Chaos Time consuming Logistic strips of paper with URL’s Technical

A blog is a website that allows an author to publish instantly on the Internet from any Internet connection .
Skills required:
Classroom uses:
(Richardson, 2006)
Definition:
The ones you use for sending an e-mail A reflective, journal-type blog A class blog A shared blog

A class blog (website)
easy access (Inside and outside the lab)
Easy to edit lessons
Teacher trainer check and edit well in advanced

They got engaged
They became aware of things they were learning (metacognition)
They developed IT skills
They worked at their own pace
Children’s behavior changed

surprised with students' behavior (less disruptive)
developed IT skills
were in tune with the way their students are learning outside the classroom.
accepted and undertood the student-centered approach

Egbert, J. (2005). CALL essentials. TESOL. USA Chapelle, C. (2001). Computer applications in second language acquisition. Cambridge University Press Information and Communications technologies for language teachers (ICT4LT). Retrieved information January 10th, 2006. http://www.ict4lt.org/en/index.htm Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms . Corwin Press Dudeney, G. (2005). The internet and the language classsroom. Cambridge University Press

Blogging in Venezuelan municipal schools

by UCV / British Council

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